Thursday, June 21, 2012

Swiss Myths: European History of WW II 101 - for the gullible, ignorant, fact-averse gun zombies

It is appalling that the gun lunatics are so very illiterate in history, but more pathetic is that they are willing to believe any tripe put in front of them that promotes their gun fantasy, their obsession with "must have guns" to the exclusion of all pertinent facts and critical thinking.

I have used the term fetish object - which refers to an object where the fetishist attributes powers and capabilities to objects that are unrealistic and unreasonable, even delusional, that exceed objective reality parameters, and that reflect an obsession.

That fetish relationship obstructs rational thought, and apparently obstructs the ability of the gun loon/ gun zombie from accessing any facts which contradict the compulsive and irrational belief in what guns can do in real world situations.

So in confronting the idiocy of notions like the Japanese didn't plan to invade the mainland United States because of civilian guns, or the notion that Hitler and Mussolini weren't planning to invade Switzerland because they were afraid of the Swiss being armed, let me provide a much needed reality check -- and some WW II era European history.

I can rattle off, from my very excellent high school world history classes, a raft of reasons why Hitler didn't get around to finishing off the Swiss. Fear of Swiss shooters was not on that list, because it doesn't belong there.

As of 1943, as evidenced in primary source historic military memos, while it was thought in Nazi Germany that there would be losses involved, there was no FEAR of the Swiss military OR armed Swiss citizenry. There WAS a fear of sabotage -- blowing up expensive and important infrastructure.
The Nazis in fact generated a plan back in the late 1930s for invading Switzerland, and as late in the war as 1943 the Nazis were making lists of who they would execute WHEN they got around to inading Switzerland. And they had drawn up plans of partition with the Italians for who would get what parts of the country WHEN, NOT IF, that happened.

What stopped Germany from invading Switzerland was that they were losing the war on two fronts, and they no longer had the resources to do so -- but they still had the desire and intent to invade.

What stopped Germany from invading Switzerland EARLIER, when they were still winning, was primarily money. Because they were going to have Switzerland surrounded on all sides, early in the war, the Nazis were convinced they could easily invade and conquer Switzerland later, using a combination of invasion and seige warfare - starving them out over time, not only in the sense of food, but of other important resources in which the Swiss were not self-sufficient.

Wars are not won only by the kind of guns one can keep in private homes or carry. Wars are won by the possession of war materials -- Switzerland lacked any petroleum industry, Switzerland lacked any rubber source - the Alps are not noted for their rubber plantations, and Switzerland lacked any substantial steel industry.

"In the whole of Switzerland there is only one workable deposit of iron ore, which supplies the material for a single blast furnace whose daily capacity is a couple of hundred tons."

Ground wars are all well and good, but a significant part of WW II was the air war. Switzerland airspace was violated, per Wikipedia, 197 times by the Germans, and numerous times by the U.S. and allies. The Swiss air force was small, and their planes were bought from Germany, not made in Switzerland. So......as any resistance by the Swiss Air Force took place, WHERE do you think their replacement parts were coming from? WHERE do you think they were planning on getting their replacement aircraft? And given the small size and difficult terrain, where do you think their replacement pilots were going to be trained?

Even if you posit that the Swiss could reverse engineer their own manufacture of replacement parts, or entire replacement planes (you have to construct what the pilots know how to fly) - what do you gun zombies think they would make those parts or planes out of -- swiss cheese instead of steel or aluminum?

Aluminum is made of Bauxite, and in case your education did not include basic geography - note, Switzerland is conspicuously NOT on this list:

Resources of bauxites, the raw material for aluminium, are not widespread throughout the world. There are only seven bauxite-rich areas: Western and Central Africa (mostly, Guinea), South America (Brazil, Venezuela, Suriname), the Caribbean (Jamaica), Oceania and Southern Asia (Australia, India), China, the Mediterranean (Greece, Turkey) and the Urals (Russia).

The glimmer of understanding should be flickering about now -- Swizterland did not have the resources or the manpower to repel a German invasion, their guns and military not withstanding. To believe that the posseession of firearms intimidated the Germans not to invade is incredibly stupid and ignorant.

But lets look at the assumptions about Germany invading Switzerland a little closer, courtesy of the web site History of Switzerland, Switzerland's Role in WW II:

A small but industrialized country with virtually no raw materials

Switzerland's industry always depended to an extraordinary extent on exporting machinery, watches, chemicals and pharmaceutics. The high population density, hard conditions for agriculture especially in the alpine region and a scarcity on raw materials are responsible for a notorious deficit in food production and a notorious trade deficit. During the 20th century tourism, transport services andfinancial services (banking and insurance) had to provide for a favourable balance of payments. During World War II imports fell from 30 % of the net national product (average value at the end of the 1920's and again during the 1950's) to 9 %, exports from 25% to 9% and tourism to almost zero.(Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland - World War II, final report, p. 55-58)

"What stopped Germany from invading Switzerland EARLIER, when they were still winning, was primarily money. Because they were going to have Switzerland surrounded on all sides, early in the war, the Nazis were convinced they could easily invade and conquer Switzerland later, using a combination of invasion and seige warfare - starving them out over time, not only in the sense of food, but of other important resources in which the Swiss were not self-sufficient."

If YOU had done your research you would find that the strategy changed for Switzerland from defending their borders to retreating to fortified strongholds with stocked with supplies that would last nearly indefinitely and mounting a guerrilla campaign and war of attrition against Germany should they invade. That defensive strategy also included the destruction of infrastructure. The strategy also left industrialized and heavily populated areas relatively unprotected. The plan adopted by General Guisan was called the National Redoubt. The strategy was disseminated on July 20,1940. If the Germans invaded, according to you, by planning on a war of attrition, it would have played right into the Swiss plan of resistance.

Also, while you accuse nearly everyone who contradicts what your opinion is of not having facts. The case you've made on why Germany didn't invade Switzerland is all circumstantial. Even if we take your opinion at face value, that the German plan was to fight a war of attrition, the Swiss were setup and prepared to fight exactly that war.

Nice one, Culusmaximus, if you went furhter down in the Wikipedia article you would find:

Despite the prevailing public and political attitudes in Switzerland, some higher-ranking officers within the Swiss Army had pro-Nazi sympathies: notably Colonel Arthur Fonjallaz and Colonel Eugen Bircher, who led the Schweizerischer Vaterländischer Verband. In Letters with Suzanne (French: Lettres à Suzanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1949), the Swiss journalist Léon Savary retrospectively denounced in this sense "the unconscious influence of hitlerism on Swiss people"

Nazi Germany repeatedly violated Swiss airspace. During the Invasion of France, German aircraft violated Swiss airspace at least 197 times.[9] In several air incidents, the Swiss (using 10 Bf-109 D, 80 Bf-109 E fighters bought from Germany and some Morane-Saulnier M.S.406s built under license in Switzerland), shot down 11 Luftwaffe planes between 10 May 1940 and 17 June 1940.[9] Germany protested diplomatically on 5 June 1940, and with a second note on 19 June 1940 which contained clear threats. Hitler was especially furious when he saw that German equipment was shooting down German pilots. He said they would respond "in another manner".

Further down, you find that Jadegold's opinion is supported:

Switzerland's trade was blockaded by both the Allies and by the Axis. Each side openly exerted pressure on Switzerland not to trade with the other. Economic cooperation and extension of credit to the Third Reich varied according to the perceived likelihood of invasion, and the availability of other trading partners.

But, I am curious as to how you would believe that a country with little national resources could last long against a larger, better equipped foe that had access to resources, Culusmaximus?

Of course, the real reason was not guns, but:

Switzerland was an important base for espionage by both sides in the conflict and often mediated communications between the Axis and Allied powers by serving as a protecting power.

Poopie-head: Where did I object to the comment made by Jadegold? It's not one thing that kept the Nazis out of Switzerland to the exclusion of all other factors. That would be silly. It would be equally silly to take the position of dog gone that all other factors EXCEPT the Swiss military were not a part of the calculation that Germany made in deciding to invade Switzerland.

Grandiarse Randy, there is no credible evidence that the Swiss military had ANY EFFECT whatsoever on the decision to invade or not invade Switzerland.

All those other factors I mentioned clearly did have a significant effect. Guns and the Swiss military did not.

That is clear from the Swiss strategy, which is a loser's strategy, and not a particularly good one. (you should look at the analysis of it further)

That is clear from internal Swiss documents. That is clear from internal German documents.

About the only place there is any credibility for the sillyass notion that the Swiss having a small armed population was a deterrent to invasion is in the minds of the gun zombies. The Swiss had NO means whatsoever to effectively withstand an invasion.

NONE, NADA,NIET,ZIP, ZERO.

One, you have failed to make any substantive or factual case that their guns were a deterrent. First, you have to make the case that the Swiss and their firearms existed in sufficient numbers to be of use against the overwhelming arms and armor, artillery and airforce, inlcuding greater quantity of firearms and the necessary resupply sources to use them effectively over an extended period of time, of the Germans.

You can't.

Stockpiling doesn't provide enough for long enough, and the Swiss could not stockpile enough in their reduit strategy to be effective for very long against a superior force, but more than that you cannot successfully make the argument that the firearms they had would be able to defeat those forces.

Two, it is not defending a country or deterring an invading force to let them take over. That was the Swiss plan - let them.

Three, where there was that kind of resistance, the Nazis simply began exterminating people wholesale. Those that they did not cart off to death camps - which would be a significant number of Swiss Jews, they slaughtered in enormous numbers as the Nazi deterrent against armed resistance. Typically the ratio was 10 nationals for every Nazi who was killed.

In a small country, with a small population, where the invaders would PREFER to get rid of what they termed an inferior German offshoot, that kind of resistance is far less effective than sabotage.

You appear to know relatively little about the actual resistance. How many Maquis, for example, have you known personally, whose record of effective activity agains the Nazis can be verified?

You reason like someone who has learned what passes for their knowledge of WW II from video games, not books, not real people or other primary sources.

GRandyios wrote "If YOU had done your research you would find that the strategy changed for Switzerland from defending their borders to retreating to fortified strongholds with stocked with supplies that would last nearly indefinitely and mounting a guerrilla campaign and war of attrition against Germany should they invade. That defensive strategy also included the destruction of infrastructure. The strategy also left industrialized and heavily populated areas relatively unprotected. The plan adopted by General Guisan was called the National Redoubt. The strategy was disseminated on July 20,1940."

I've read about it, and unlike you, I read about it in the original French, as the Reduit Suisse. I could have read the German version, but my Deutsch is rusty while my Francais is still fairly fluent.

It was never a uniquely WW II idea; it dated back to the 1880s. In terms of 19th century technology it made some sense; in terms of 20th century technology it was about as ineffective as the Maginot Line -- remember that from history? That's why the Swiss decommissioned it.

The notion that their little puny individual weapons were going to be effective was more internal Swiss propoganda in the face of some pretty serious hostility.

It was never EVER a serious threat to the Nazis, or to the Allies for that matter when Swiss neutrality was inconvenient.

From wikipedia:Switzerland's Réduit strategy during World War II was essentially one of deterrence. The idea was to make clear to the Third Reich that an invasion would have a high cost. Simultaneously, economic concessions were made to Germany in the hope that the overall cost of a German invasion would be perceived as higher than the potential benefits. Despite this, it is clear that Hitler intended to invade eventually and that the Allied landing at Normandy as well as the difficulties faced in invading Russia were pivotal in merely delaying an invasion.[7]

gRandy-ose, you have a sloppy mind, do sloppy research and demonstrate poor analytical skills, further impaired by a poor grasp of history, especially military history.

Your education was apparently deficient in providing you a structure of concepts and information from which to process facts.

In contrast I do much better research than you do, and clearly am capable of more critical thinking than you demonstrate here.

You don't think, you are a sock puppet who repeats what he is told -- and you're not very good about selecting for quality the opinions you repeat.

Seriously, as someone who has a pretty good idea of how military logistics, strategy, and tactics--It made far more sense to let the Swiss remain "neutral" than to "invade" them.

Belgium was given as an example of a country which was overrun because of the lack of arms a while back, to which I countered with the Belgians were well armed.

For example, the Battle of Eben Emael, the Germans landed airborne troops on the roof of that Fortress. While Belgium lacks the natural defences of Switzerland, they were prepared and were able to stall the Germans, but still the German Military superiority was able to over run the Country.

I should add that the Battle of Hannut was one of the 10 largest tank battles in Military History. It was the largest tank battle in history when it happened, but was dwarfed by later actions in the Second WOrld War.

So, while the Swiss could have delayed the Germans on paper, it would have been more likely that German Superiority would have prevailed.

But, as I keep saying, the status quo of Swiss pseudoneutrality was far better for Germany than having it as an actual part of the Reich.